


Endgame Studies for False Beginners

by theimprobable1



Series: Endgame Studies [3]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25094467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theimprobable1/pseuds/theimprobable1
Summary: Troy has traveled the world to become his own man. Abed has built a new life for himself in LA. They haven't seen each other for years. It would be unsurprising if it turned out that they've grown apart.Or that's what they tell themselves because they're dummies who are too in love to think straight.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Series: Endgame Studies [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783591
Comments: 69
Kudos: 365





	1. Chapter 1

Troy is coming.

Logically, Abed knows this. Troy has completed his trip around the world and come back to America, just as he had promised he would. He texted to say he would come and visit Abed. He has sent flight details. His plane left Denver seven minutes after the scheduled departure time and is now probably somewhere above Utah and likely to land on time. If Abed wants to pick him up, he really should get going soon – traffic is bound to be a nightmare at this time of day.

But minutes tick by and he continues sitting on his bed, not moving. He’s being irrational. At this point, the likelihood that Troy would end up not coming is so low as to be nearly non-existent. He would have to land at LAX, decide that he doesn’t want to see Abed after all and immediately get on another flight. And while it’s true that Troy is now a millionaire and can therefore afford eccentric whims like flying halfway across the United States for no reason and then doubling back, it would be fairly out of character for him. (As far as Abed is still able to judge Troy’s character.) Troy is an honest person, and friends don’t lie to each other. And at this point, it’s simply impossible for him to promise he’s coming back, mean it, but end up changing his mind because something better has come along. He _is_ coming.

Aware that his behavior would be frustrating for the audience, Abed forces himself to get up. He’s going to pick Troy up at the airport like any normal friend would. Although technically, Abed didn’t actually tell him he would do that, because promising to pick him up would mean committing to the possibility that Troy would actually come, that they would meet again and have to figure out what – if anything – was left of their relationship, and he just – couldn’t do that. But now he has objective evidence that it isn’t just wishful thinking, and failing to show up would just be rude. He slips on his shoes, finds his car keys and leaves the apartment.

Abed hates driving, especially during the rush hour, but right now he’s actually grateful for it because it requires his absolute focus, so he can’t get distracted by running improbable simulations. Or panicking.

It occurs to him that this is probably precisely the sort of thing he should have brought up in therapy – Troy coming back, coming to see him, and how that makes him feel. Overall, he's probably never mentioned Troy in therapy as much as he should have, given Troy’s importance in his life. There’s no way he’ll be able to avoid talking about him during his next session, though, because by then he’ll have _seen Troy again for the first time in years,_ and he can’t imagine anything else could happen in his life that could overshadow that. (Possibly an alien invasion, but in that case he doesn’t think he’d still be going to therapy.)

He can already imagine how it will go. The scene will open with a wide shot of him and Sophie, sitting across from each other in comfortable chairs, a coffee table between them, designed to induce the feeling of a friend’s living room rather than a therapist’s office and failing spectacularly at that. There will be a moment of silence, where Sophie will look at him while Abed will look at the painting of a mountain range behind her head. He’s always found it soothing to look at.

Then Sophie will lean forward a little and say, “Abed. I’d like to think that we’ve established a relationship of trust over the last year or so. Would you say that’s true?”

Abed will nod, because it is true. He does trust her, and she’s been very useful in helping him adapt to his life in LA, without the support system he’d grown used to. Overall, she’s been exceedingly helpful.

“Then why do you think you’ve never talked about Troy until now?”

“It wasn’t relevant to the plot,” Abed will say, and that will also be true. The plot is about him working on a TV set, building new professional and personal relationships and learning to live independently. Troy, on a boat somewhere in the middle of the ocean, does not factor into that.

“Really,” Sophie will say, and it won’t be a question. “Not even when you found out he was coming home? When he told you he was going to visit? It still wasn’t relevant?”

Abed will be silent, and Sophie will let the silence stretch.

“I didn’t want to think about it,” Abed will admit eventually. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

“In case he was lying about coming to visit?”

“No. Troy wouldn’t lie. But something could get in the way, something… better. And even if he came, it would just mean we find out we’re no longer compatible and he’s going to leave again, and it’s pointless to upend my life over something obviously temporary and transient,” Abed won’t say, because he can’t ever say that, he can barely think that even though he knows it’s true, he knows it’s true, he’s run the simulations and – and he’s missed his exit, because apparently not even driving is distraction enough.

He gets to the terminal just as the status of Troy’s flight on the arrivals board changes from ON TIME to LANDED. The space around the exit from the airside area is crowded with people, holding up name signs or impatiently craning their necks to catch the first glimpse of their loved ones. Typical arrivals hall scene. Abed stands at the back, unwilling to force his way through the crowd, to place himself somewhere where it would be even more obvious that he’s waiting for someone. That he’s been waiting for someone for a long time, even when the told himself that he wasn’t.

He sees Troy before Troy sees him. If this were a movie, the surrounding noise would die down and everything but Troy’s face would become blurry and unfocused – but that’s really no different from how looking at Troy has always felt. His face has always been the one Abed knows best, the easiest to pick out in a crowd, the least likely to get confused with somebody else. Even now, after all this time, he doesn’t need to double check to make sure it really is Troy, despite the beginnings of a beard. It’s him. It’s him, and Abed’s heart stops and then lurches and picks up at double speed.

*

It’s him. It’s Abed.

Troy’s eyes are drawn to him almost like by an invisible force, as if he’d known beforehand that that’s where Abed would be standing, by a soda machine, right behind a family holding ‘Welcome home!’ balloons. He trips over his own feet and someone nearly walks into him, swearing under their breath, when the sight of Abed stops Troy in his tracks. Abed’s eyes are already fixed on him, and the next thing Troy knows he’s moving again, weaving his way through people who are all incredibly slow and getting in the way with their stupid rolling suitcases and overloaded luggage carts. He’s running, as much as he can with a heavy duffel bag over his shoulder, and then he’s there, with Abed right in front of him, staring at him, Abed in skinny jeans and a flannel over a t-shirt with a bee on it and his hair and his long limbs and his eyes and his _face--_

“Abed,” Troy breathes, the name forcing its way out of his mouth.

“Hi, Troy,” Abed says, as though the last time they saw each other was a couple of days ago and not a couple of years, but his eyes are huge and full of something that kind of looks like whatever it is that Troy is feeling right now, and his voice – Troy knows he didn’t forget the sound of Abed’s voice, he didn’t because he couldn’t, but now, hearing it again, live, not tinny and distorted through speakers, it almost feels like he did forget.

He opens his arms, overwhelmed with the need to pull Abed close, but then he stops himself, because Abed has rules about touching and Troy used to be exempt from most of them but it’s been years and maybe he isn’t anymore.

“Can I hug you?” he asks.

“It’s an airport reunion scene,” Abed says. “I think you have to.”

It’s all the encouragement Troy needs before he lets his bag drop to the floor and effectively throws himself at Abed, crushing him to his chest. Abed goes willingly, his hands coming up to Troy’s back almost immediately, and that feels _so good_ because Abed doesn’t always hug back – that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like or want the hug, it simply means that he doesn’t feel like hugging back at that particular moment. But now he is, his arms pull Troy closer and his head bows down to the crook of Troy’s neck, and Troy – Troy starts crying, because, well, it’s an airport reunion scene and _Love Actually_ wishes it was this good. He knew he would cry and he doesn’t even care, because Abed’s holding him and he smells like _Abed,_ like soap and butter and _home_ and Troy never, ever wants to let go.

“I missed you so much,” he chokes out against Abed’s shoulder. “Abed, _I missed you so much.”_ The enormity of it almost takes his breath away – he missed Abed the entire time he was gone, but now it feels like he’d never let himself fully experience it because he just wouldn’t have been able to bear it, and it’s only now, when he has Abed back in his arms, that he lets himself realize how truly deeply it _sucked_ to be apart from him.

“Me too,” Abed whispers, so quietly that Troy only hears him because his lips are so close to Troy’s ear, and it triggers a fresh wave of tears. He sniffles and tries to pull away because he’s getting Abed’s shirt wet, but Abed doesn’t let him. In fact, it seems that his arms tighten around Troy even more. And Troy doesn’t fight it, why would he? He holds Abed and lets Abed hold him and doesn’t care how much time passes or what else might be going on. He realizes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that now would be a perfect time for someone to switch his bag for an identical looking one containing stolen money or drugs or a store’s worth of women’s underthings, but he doesn’t even care.

It’s an indeterminable amount of time later when they finally pull apart, and even then they don’t stop touching. Troy keeps his hands on Abed’s upper arms and one of Abed’s hands comes up to touch Troy’s _face_ , his thumb wiping gently at the tear tracks on Troy’s face.

“The beard gives you a proper seaman look,” Abed remarks, his eyes intent on Troy’s face, clearly taking in every detail.

“Nah,” Troy says, because he doesn’t _want_ to look like a seaman, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the stupid fucking sea ever again. (Except for swimming and surfing and building sandcastles on the beach because that’s fun, but no sailing anywhere.) “It’s just meant to make me look manly even when I start bawling in the middle of an airport.”

That makes Abed smile a little, and how did Troy survive two and a half years without seeing that smile? Seeing it feels like taking a breath of fresh air after years of being shut underground.

Abed pulls a packet of tissues from his pocket and hands it to Troy. Troy wipes at his face, all the while acutely conscious of Abed’s eyes fixed on him. Then they just look at each other, happily ignoring the airport hustle going on around them. Abed’s hair is a little longer, enough for the ends to start curling a little in ways that make Troy want to _touch,_ and his hairline seems to have receded the tiniest bit, but other than that he looks just like Troy remembers him. His Abed. 

“I’m so happy to see you,” he says, grinning. “It’s been way too long.”

“Too long,” Abed agrees. Something about the way he says it sounds not quite right, but then he’s lifting one hand towards Troy and the other to his chest, and Troy doesn’t even need to consciously decide to do it before his body mirrors Abed’s movements. They do their handshake and it feels so _good_ , so _right_ that Troy can’t help but laugh. 

For a moment they just stand there and smile at each other, then Abed seems to shake himself out of a trance.

“Shall we get going?” he asks. “I parked pretty far, this airport’s so confusing. But on the plus side, there’s a spiral ramp and I’m on the top floor.”

“Awesome! I love those things. So you drive now?”

“Not if I can help it, but I often have to.”

“Aw, you should’ve said, I could’ve gotten an Uber or something.”

“It’s all right, I’ve mostly gotten used to it.”

Troy picks up his bag and just to be sure, he slides the zipper on a side pocket open to check that it’s still his stuff inside.

“Good thinking,” Abed says. “Someone could have easily switched your bag while we weren’t paying attention.”

“ _I know!”_ Troy grins so wide his cheeks actually hurt. They were thinking about the same thing! Like they used to! Which means that if things had seemed weird between them over Skype and email and Abed seemed so distant, that was just because of the, well, _distance._ And now that they are in the same place again, they’re going to be _fine._ Even if Abed has a new life new, with new friends. There can still be room in it for Troy.

Right?

*

As they walk towards the parking, Abed becomes aware of two things. Firstly, he has no idea how he’s going to drive if he can’t stop looking at Troy. And how could he stop looking at Troy when Troy is impossibly, miraculously here, walking right next to Abed and grinning and talking, looking so much like himself it’s almost painful, the California sun bouncing off his skin. Secondly, he has no idea _where_ he’s supposed to drive, he hasn’t planned anything. He always planned things to do for everyone who visited: Annie, Jeff and Britta, Shirley and her boys, Abra and her husband, Annie again. He tailored their programs to include locations relevant to their favorite movies. But he hasn’t done that for Troy. He’s been too scared of how much Troy could turn out to have changed to think about anything like that.

But this is New Troy, who has stubble and faint lines in the corners of his eyes and carries himself differently and makes fun of himself when he cries, Troy who isn’t part of Troy-and-Abed anymore, and maybe this Troy doesn’t want Abed to organize his time for him anyway. Abed doesn’t know the rules for interacting with New Troy, even if (so far) he doesn’t seem as different from Old Troy as Abed feared he would be.

“Where do you want to go?” he decides to ask him as he places Troy’s duffel back in the trunk of his car. “We could grab something to eat and do some sightseeing…”

“Oh, um,” says Troy, and he looks around the parking lot as if looking for inspiration. “I don’t really care about touristy stuff right now, to be honest. I’d much rather see where you live and just… catch up. I want to know what’s going on in your life, man.”

Something warm spills in Abed’s chest and he doesn’t know what to do about it, so he says, “You already know what’s going on in my life. I work as a production assistant. I live in LA. That’s it.”

Troy scoffs. “Come on, that’s not _it._ I mean, I don’t even know what a production assistant _does_ , you need to explain all that to me. Do you get to sit in those folding chairs? What famous people have you met? Do you get to snap that clapper thing? Who are your colleagues? Who are your _friends?_ What’s your place like? What’s good on TV right now? I’m completely out of the loop. Oh, and I _need_ to watch your show with behind-the-scenes commentary, I’ve been looking forward to that for _ages.”_

The warm thing in Abed’s chest spreads further, filling his whole body. It’s true he never talked much about himself in his emails to Troy or during their infrequent skype calls, preferring to let Troy tell him about the places he visited, and leaving it to the rest of the study group to keep Troy informed about what was going on with them. It was just… easier that way. And somehow he managed to make himself believe that Troy wanted it that way. Now, Troy’s eager interest in his life, in _him,_ is something he doesn’t quite know that to do with, but it feels good.

“Let’s go to my apartment, then,” he says, and Troy grins at him like he’d just found out that Firefly was getting renewed.

“Cool. I booked a hotel that should be pretty close to your place. I _think_. I’m still not very good with maps. You’d think I would be, after all this time, but really, if it weren’t for LeVar, I’d probably still be going round in circles around Jamaica. And sometimes things look really close but then it turns out they’re actually pretty far apart and… Abed?”

The warm thing in Abed’s chest has turned cold. “You booked a hotel?”

“Uh… yeah?”

It makes perfect sense, of course. After all, Abed didn’t tell Troy he could stay with him. As a matter of fact, he was barely able to communicate with him once it became clear that Troy was really coming back to America. And really, why should Troy want to stay in Abed’s apartment that he shares with two other people Troy doesn’t know and be around Abed 24/7 when he could probably afford to book a suite in one of the best hotels Los Angeles has to offer.

“Cool. Cool cool cool,” he lies, avoiding Troy’s gaze as he climbs into the driver’s seat. All this time, he never let himself imagine what it would be like to have Troy share his living space again, even just for a day or two, so why does it still hurt?

Troy opens the passenger side door and slides into his seat. Abed doesn’t look at him.

“I thought… I mean, you didn’t say, and I thought, you have roommates, so you probably don’t need an extra person crowding the place… But I can still cancel the booking.”

“No, you’re right. You’ll definitely be more comfortable in a hotel.” He inserts the key in the ignition and starts the car.

“Yeah,” Troy says as they pull out of the parking space. “There’s a no-show fee anyway.”

One of Abed’s many, many favorite things about Troy has always been how bad he is at hiding his emotions. He’s always been so much easier for Abed to read than anybody else. And it turns out that his years at sea haven’t changed that, because when Abed hears the falsely composed tone of his voice and chances to glance at Troy’s face, it occurs to him that Troy is _disappointed_.

He imagines what this scene must look like from the audience’s point of view, and he suddenly thinks he knows what’s going on.

“Troy. It seems to me we’re getting dangerously close to a miscommunication plotline.”

He sees Troy turn his head towards him from the corner of his eye, but he keeps his gaze straight ahead. He’s driving, after all.

“We are?” Troy asks.

“I think so. I’d like to avoid that, if possible, it’s an overused trope that creates cheap drama. We should both just say what we mean.”

“Okay,” Troy says slowly, but doesn’t continue. Abed takes a deep breath.

“I would like it if you stayed at my place, but only if that’s what you want.”

“Yeah?” Troy says hopefully, a smile returning to his voice. “I’d really like that too. Like old times, right? Your roommates won’t mind?”

Abed shakes his head, even though he didn’t actually ask them. “We all have guests sometimes. Annie came over last summer, and then again for Thanksgiving.”

“Aww, Annie. I miss her so much. Do you think she’s being super badass in D.C.?”

Abed relaxes, the tense moment gone.

“I’m certain of it. I keep asking her whether the portrayal of the FBI in movies is in any way accurate and she always says that all she does is admin work. But that’s obviously what she has to say to avoid revealing state secrets.”

“That’s what I thought!” Troy agrees happily. “I love having cool friends. Even if it means you were both too busy for a reunion. Do you have to go to work tomorrow?”

Abed grips the steering wheel a little tighter. So much for avoiding tension.

“No. We’re between seasons right now.”

“Awesome!” Troy says, but then his brain catches up. “Wait… I thought you said you were too busy to come to Colorado?”

“I didn’t say I was busy, I said I couldn’t come,” Abed corrects him, feeling like a liar even though it’s true. He couldn’t.

“Oh. Okay,” Troy says, and Abed knows that it’s that moment again – the moment when a character very obviously reaches a wrong conclusion about the other’s meaning, but this time Abed can’t do anything about it. There’s no way to explain to Troy why he couldn’t come, why it was a physical impossibility, that he wanted to see Troy so badly he couldn’t face the prospect of actually seeing him. It doesn’t make any sense even to Abed.

He keeps driving in silence for a while, very aware of Troy looking out the window beside him. Does he think Abed didn’t care enough to come welcome him back? Is that something that upsets him? Did it really matter to him that Abed wasn’t there?

“I’m very happy you’re here, Troy,” he says then, aware how awkward it sounds, but he means every word and hopes Troy still knows him well enough to be able to tell.

Troy shifts in his seat, turning his head to face Abed.

“Me too,” he murmurs. Abed can feel his gaze on him. He swallows and keeps looking straight ahead.

Then Troy seems to shake himself and speaks in a brighter voice. “So, tell me about your roommates. It’s a guy and a girl, right?”

Abed tells him very briefly about Kyle, a UCLA graduate student, and Kamala, a hotel receptionist. It’s probably the least interesting topic Troy could have asked about, but he still hangs on Abed’s every word.

“So do you guys have movie nights and make dinner together, like we used to with Annie?”

Abed almost laughs at that. “No. We don’t really have anything in common. Kamala’s favorite shows are _Glee_ and _The Vampire Diaries,_ and Kyle only watches nature documentaries,” he says to illustrate his point, and shudders at the thought.

“So you’re not friends?” Troy asks, sounding almost sad.

Abed shrugs. “Not really. We get along fine, but when we’re all at home we mostly just stay in our own rooms. It’s nothing like with you and Annie.” Nothing could ever be.

“I suppose that’s what having roommates as an adult is like,” Troy says, but he doesn’t sound too happy about it. “Are you thinking about getting your own place?”

“Once I can afford it. This is good enough for now, and it’s nice to have someone around.”

Troy hums in agreement and then seems to get lost in thoughts for a bit. In the silence that follows, Abed finally lets himself acknowledge that he’s bringing Troy into his LA life, which he had, up until now, done his best to keep entirely separate. There will be no coming back from this, he realizes. His heart has already grown two sizes in the short time Troy’s been here. Everything he’s done to _move on_ will be for nothing once Troy leaves again, the life he’s so carefully built for himself won’t save him from the inevitable heartbreak, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

But at least that means he’s got nothing to lose anymore, and no reason not to take as much as he can get while he has the opportunity.

*


	2. Chapter 2

When Abed opens the door to his apartment, there’s a young red-haired guy who Troy assumes must be one of Abed’s roommates tying his shoelaces in the hall.

“Hi, Abed,” he says indifferently, then straightens up and notices Troy. His eyes widen as he very obviously checks Troy out. “Oh, and hel _lo.”_

“Kyle, this is Troy, my friend from college, he’ll be staying for a while. Troy, my roommate Kyle.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Troy, trying not to be hurt by being referred to as Abed’s ‘friend from college’, like he’s Pavel or someone else equally unimportant. He extends his hand to Kyle, because he assumes that’s what serious people who only watch documentaries like to do when they meet someone. Even though Kyle is currently giving Troy a look that reminds Troy (terrifyingly) of the way the Dean used to look at Jeff, which doesn’t make him seem very serious at all.

“It’s nicer to meet _you,”_ Kyle purrs and actually _bats his eyelashes_ at Troy, holding his hand for far longer than necessary.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Abed interjects abruptly. “You don’t want to be late.”

Kyle turns towards him rather reluctantly and finally drops Troy’s hand. Abed gives him an intense look.

Kyle blinks at him, then his face breaks into a delighted grin. “You’re right, I have a date. And as a matter of fact, I’m really liking my chances of not coming home tonight, and I think Kamala’s got a night shift. So, you know.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “The place is all yours. Have _fuuun.”_

He winks at them, grabs a set of keys from a hook by the door and saunters out.

Troy is left staring at the door for a moment, then turns to Abed. “Did that really just happen?”

“Don’t worry about him. He likes playing into the all-gay-men-are-promiscuous trope for some reason, but he’s harmless. He knows how to take no for an answer, he’ll leave you alone if you tell him you’re not interested.”

Troy was actually more taken aback by the way Kyle went from hitting on him to basically telling him and Abed to have sex within the span of about fifteen seconds, and he’s about to say that when something else catches his interest.

“Wait, does that mean he hit on you too?” Troy suddenly thinks he doesn’t like Kyle one bit.

“It’s sort of what he does,” Abed shrugs, like his roommate hitting on him isn’t worth his attention.

“Didn’t that make things awkward? When you had to turn him down but then go on living with him, I mean?”

Abed doesn’t immediately answer, and then a moment goes by and he still doesn’t answer but looks at Troy, and then Troy’s brain does the record scratch thing.

“You… you _didn’t_ turn him down?” He asks, and his brain is wrinkling so much right now it will probably never get unwrinkled again. 

Abed shakes his head slowly, his eyes fixed on Troy. “Kamala said that the best way to avoid sexual tension in the apartment and unnecessary roommate drama would be if we all just had sex together right off the bat to get it out of the way. Personally, I thought it was just as likely to create drama as to prevent it, but it seemed like an interesting way to explore new roommate dynamics.”

If Troy thought his brain couldn’t possibly get any more wrinkled, he was very, very wrong. He only just got here, and now, this!

“So you slept with _both of them?”_ he splutters, and tries very hard not to imagine Abed naked with Kyle and the girl from _Slumdog Millionaire_ , who plays Kamala in his head. “Like a threesome?”

“Just once,” Abed clarifies, his eyebrows drawing together as he studies Troy.

“But - but you never had a threesome with me and Annie!” Which is a stupid thing to say and not even close to what Troy means, but he isn’t actually sure what he means and this is what comes out of his mouth.

Abed inclines his head to the side. “Did you _want_ me to have a threesome with you and Annie?”

“No!” Troy cries out quickly, because - no, just no, that’s just plain wrong.

“I don’t understand,” Abed says. “Is it the threesome aspect that’s weirding you out, or the fact that one of them was a guy? Because if that’s the case, I should probably say that Kyle isn’t the only man I’ve been with.”

Oh. _Oh._

“I’m not weirded out,” Troy says, which is mostly a lie. He’s kind of freaking out on the inside. And a bit on the outside too, probably. It’s just that - _Abed likes guys._ Which Troy hoped he might. He spent many long nights on the Childish Tycoon hoping that Abed might like guys. Except he somehow forgot to consider the possibility that Abed liking guys could also mean _Abed liking guys who are not Troy,_ which is not an option that had ever factored in Troy’s nighttime fantasies. And then it occurs to him that he’s not weirded out, he’s just jealous. (Like that time Abed crossed ‘make out with the hottest girl on campus’ off his quintessential college experience list and then it turned out it had been more than just making out and they had actually hooked up several times because Abed was apparently some kind of sex god and the girl just kept coming back for more even though she didn’t actually like him outside of sex because she was a complete idiot and in fact Troy still kind of hates her and hopes that she has children by now who leave Legos all over the place and she steps on them all the time. (The Legos, not the children.))

It’s his own fault for forgetting Abed could have an active sex life and he has no right to get jealous and Abed can sleep with whoever he wants of any gender and with as many people at once as he likes and it’s _none of Troy’s business_ and he really needs to calm down right about now because now Abed probably thinks that Troy’s homophobic and Troy really can’t let him think that or just let him feel weird about liking whoever he likes and he’s kind of panicking and he doesn’t want to keep thinking about Abed with other people, so he says,

“I’m gay.”

Abed just stares at him, which makes sense because Troy just sort of blurted it out at random, didn’t he? But Troy can’t bear the silence, so he just keeps talking.

“I figured it out while I was on my trip. Actually I figured it out before that but I didn’t want to have figured it out so I pretended that I didn’t, which was stupid. And I had to sail around the world to let myself admit it, which is even more stupid when you think about it. I probably drove LeVar crazy but he was really nice about it. He’s a cool guy. He went to a gay bar with me in Cape Town when I was too scared to go alone.”

“Troy.”

“And he’s like, really cool about people shipping Geordi and Data? Anyway, sorry, I didn’t mean to blurt that out like that, I just didn’t want you to feel weird about liking guys. Because I like guys too. Which you already know because that’s what being gay means and I already said that.”

“Troy. You’re rambling.”

“I know, I just can’t stop it! Words just keep coming out of my mouth and it - ha! See what I did there? _Coming out! I_ didn’t even realize --”

Abed steps closer and takes Troy in his arms and yeah, that works to shut Troy up all right. He takes a shaky breath and tentatively hugs Abed back.

“I’m proud of you,” Abed says quietly, and Troy… starts tearing up again, because of course he does.

“Are you doing a coming out bit right now?” he asks, since he’s always found it weird that anyone would be proud of someone for being gay and it never sounded like something a real life person would say.

“No,” Abed says, his hand rubbing soothing circles on Troy’s back, and Troy lets his head relax against Abed’s shoulder. It’s really lovely to be held like this. “I am proud of you. Your main character arc early on was about accepting yourself for who you are. I thought it was complete about two seasons in and then changed into a need for independence. I didn’t realize there was still one more thing you needed to come to terms with, and I’m glad you had your spin-off if it helped you do that. It’s not always an easy thing to do, and I’m proud of you for that.”

God, Abed really is just the best, isn’t he? That isn’t news to Troy, he’s always known that, but it still makes him have all kinds of mushy feelings. He wonders if has occurred to Abed that Troy could like _him,_ and how that possibility makes him feel. But it’s too soon to talk about that. Troy will tell him, it’s too big a secret to keep, but not yet. He’s only just gotten Abed back.

“Thanks, buddy,” he murmurs instead, and lets himself be held and comforted by Abed’s proximity and the familiar scent of him. It will be okay, really, if it turns out that Abed doesn’t feel the same, if Troy can still get hugs like this. 

“Wait a minute,” Troy says after a long, peaceful moment, and pulls away a little to look at Abed. “I had a spin-off? _Why didn’t you tell me?”_

“How could you not know?” Abed asks. “Wasn’t that why you left? To be a main character?”

“Oh. I guess.” It’s sort of true, Troy supposes, but also not? He’s not sure he likes the implications. “Is this here _your_ own spin-off, then?”

“Yes.”

“So now that I’m here, does that mean I’m like a guest star in your show, or are we doing a crossover?”

Abed looks at him, his beautiful eyes unblinking. “I don’t know. I guess that remains to be seen.” Then he takes in a sharp breath and steps back. Troy immediately feels the loss. “Can we move on, or do we need to have more emotional heart-to-hearts?”

“I think we’re done for now,” Troy says, wiping his eyes quickly. “Give me the grand tour.”

Abed shows him to the living room, combined with an open-plan kitchen. It’s nice, but it looks like something out of a catalog, all white and beige and blue, with the only pictures on the walls being random landscapes and ocean vistas. Troy would never have guessed Abed lived there.

“I know,” Abed says before Troy even opens his mouth. “Like I said, we don’t really have anything in common, so we’ve agreed not to impose our individual personalities on the shared areas.”

That strikes Troy as sort of sad. On the one hand, he’s a tiny little bit selfishly glad Abed’s new roommates haven’t overshadowed him and Annie (aside from the whole new dynamics thing, which Troy is just never going to think about ever again), but on the other hand, Abed’s living space should look like Abed’s living space, and Troy doesn’t like the idea of Abed censoring himself because he lives with people who don’t get him. He doesn’t trust these people to take care of Abed at all.

Abed’s room is much better. There are movie posters on the walls and another TV and stacks of DVDs basically everywhere and Star Wars bedsheets and pictures of the study group on top of the chest of drawers. He picks up a photo of the two of them, his arm slung casually over Abed’s shoulders, and smiles. Abed didn’t forget about him while Troy was gone. He still wants Troy in his life, hopefully as more than a guest star, even if he didn’t want to come to Greendale to welcome him back. That was a lot to ask, objectively. Troy is the one who left, so it makes sense that it was up to him to go to Abed. And he’ll be okay with being a recurring character in Abed’s show, if all that’s all that Abed wants. After all, recurring characters often get upgraded to series regulars.

He turns to Abed, who’s watching him thoughtfully. Troy smiles, but Abed just continues staring at him, his head cocked to the side.

“What?” Troy asks.

Abed shakes his head. “Nothing. Do you want something to eat? We could order in.”

“Can we have buttered noodles?”

“You want buttered noodles?” Abed asks, surprised. He knows Troy never shared his preference for buttered noodles and really only ate them because he wanted to have whatever Abed had. And because he was too lazy to make anything more complicated. (Sometimes he smothered his portion in ketchup for variety, which made Abed’s eye twitch.)

“Yeah. It’s a Troy and Abed movie night classic.”

So Abed makes buttered noodles, which somehow taste a million times better than whenever Troy made them for himself on the boat when he was feeling homesick, and they eat on the couch while watching Abed’s show, _Walkthrough._ It takes them five hours to get through seven episodes even though they’re just twenty minutes long because Abed’s commentary is actually better than the show. The show is pretty good, funny with interesting characters, but it’s obvious that as much as Troy thinks of it as _Abed’s show_ , Abed doesn’t actually have any creative control over it and the whole thing would be much improved if Abed was allowed to direct it, write the scripts and also possibly play the lead role. So he prefers listening to Abed’s stories about behind-the-scenes drama and his ideas about how the show could be developed and some only vaguely related tangents, and it feels like old times - Abed’s animated gestures, the light in his eyes, the way he gets so into it. Troy would honestly give up watching TV forever if he could just watch Abed all the time instad. (Abed could probably reenact anything on TV that’s actually worth watching, so it’s not like Troy would miss out.)

It’s past midnight by the time they decide to go to sleep. Abed offers to let Troy take his bed, which Troy firmly refuses - the only way he’s sleeping in Abed’s bed is if Abed is there with him, though obviously he doesn’t tell Abed that. He ends up on an air mattress next to Abed’s bed, which is actually pretty good - with Abed slightly above him, it reminds him of their bunk beds in the blanket fort, the two of them talking through the night until they fell asleep at some point in the early morning.

“Abed?” Troy speaks into the night now, some moments after Abed has switched off the bedside lamp.

“Hmm?”

“It feels really good to be back.”

He hears Abed shift on the bed. “But you’re not ‘back’. You’ve never been here before.”

“I mean - back with you.”

There’s a moment of silence where all Troy can hear is the pounding of his own heart, then Abed says, “It’s good to have you back, too.”

Troy smiles at the ceiling. The atmosphere of lying in bed, talking to Abed in the dark is making him want to broach important, personal topics. Like what Abed would think if Troy decided to stay in LA permanently. Or whether Abed is currently seeing anyone. Or the central role Abed played in Troy figuring out his sexuality. But he’s not brave enough to start with something so huge, so instead he asks about something that doesn’t directly concern the two of them.

“Hey, do you think it’s gonna be weird for Britta when I tell her I’m gay?”

“You haven’t yet?”

“No. I wanted to tell you first.”

“Oh,” Abed says, and Troy can actually hear him swallow. “Thank you.”

“But like, that has to suck, doesn’t it? When someone tells you that the whole time they were with you they didn’t actually want to be with you?”

Abed takes a moment to consider this. “I suppose. But on the other hand, it’s Britta. It’s possible she’ll just get excited about having been your beard. I think she’ll be fine. But if you want, I can tell her for you. We can do another body-switching episode., although that sort of trope generally doesn’t work well the second time.”

Troy chuckles. “I still can’t believe you did that for me, that was awesome. But no, I don’t need that anymore. I’ll tell her myself. And everyone else.”

“Britta’s pretty much guaranteed to be supportive, perhaps too much so. She’ll probably give you a misinformed speech about social justice like she gave Annie, but really she’ll just want you to be happy.”

“She didn’t give a speech to you?”

“Why to me? Oh, right. I don’t think she knows about me. Annie does, because she… put some things together, but I never really told anyone in the group.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I never consciously kept it a secret, so I didn’t think of it as something I had to share. And it didn’t seem plot-relevant, since all my potentially viable love interests have been female, but now I see I was wrong to think that. If I’d been more open with you, maybe you would’ve had an easier time accepting yourself.”

“Don’t worry about that, man,” Troy says, even though what he really wants to do is scream _‘What makes a potentially viable love interest?!’_ at the top of his lungs. “You couldn’t have known and you did what was best for you.” Then licks his lips and steels himself. “What happened to the girl you were dating, anyway? Rachel?” He makes it sound like he isn’t quite sure about her name, but in reality he remembers all too well.

“We broke up a few months before I came here,” Abed says, like it’s nothing. “But by then we’d already decided that we were each other’s romantic false leads, so it was fine. We text sometimes.”

“And there hasn’t been… anyone else since?” Troy asks, barely breathing.

“I haven’t had any other actual relationship, no.” Just random hook-ups with his roommates and probably some of the undoubtedly numerous other people who throw themselves at him all the time because they aren’t blind, Troy thinks bitterly, but resolutely pushes the thought out of his mind.

“So, um. No true romantic lead yet?”

Abed is silent for a moment, then he says, “I don’t really have time for romance at the moment,” which is most definitely not an answer to the question Troy was asking. If there really wasn’t anyone, surely Abed would have just said no, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t. He avoided the question. Which means there probably _is_ someone, only Abed isn’t comfortable talking about them for some reason...

“What about you?” Abed asks, interrupting Troy’s thoughts. “Your journey of self-discovery clearly involved some sexual experimentation.”

Troy thinks about night clubs in foreign cities, about kissing strangers in dark corners and letting them touch him in ways that felt so right and yet so wrong at the same time.

“Yeah. Some.”

“Your tone is strange,” Abed points out. “Does that mean there were negative experiences, or you don’t want to share? You don’t have to.”

Troy sighs. His tone is strange because he doesn’t like thinking about whoever Abed’s true romantic lead might be, but he needs to let that go. “No, no negative experiences. Just...” _None of them were you._ “I don’t… We never stayed too long in the same place. So it was just like, meet someone at a bar, never see them again. And I… I guess I just don’t like that.” In some ways, accepting that he doesn’t care for sex that doesn’t mean anything was more difficult that accepting he doesn’t care for sex with women.

“You want emotional connection, and casual encounters lack that,” Abed says in a tone of understanding. “It makes sense; you’ve always been very attuned to your emotions.”

“Except for that bit where I managed to miss a pretty huge thing about myself,” Troy scoffs. “But I’m done with that, you know? I’m done with missing things about myself just because I’m too busy living life by someone else’s standards. And I want... I want to know what it’s like to be with someone I love.” It feels silly and overly sentimental to say a thing like that, but the only one to hear is Abed, so it’s all right. 

It takes Abed a second to react. “Interesting,” he says then, his tone thoughtful. “I was wondering what your genre would be, now that your journey of self-discovery/naval adventure is over. If your primary motivation is to find a love interest, then romantic comedy seems most appropriate.”

Troy wants to say that he has already found his love interest, that all he needs to do is find out if he could love him back. He could say it now; bunk bed conversations are sacred, a safe place to share the deepest secrets. And while technically they’re not in bunk beds right now, the atmosphere is the same. He could say it. But this is just their first night, it’s probably too soon to risk it. And if there’s a chance that Abed already has his heart set on someone else, then Troy should probably just keep quiet, shouldn’t he? He shouldn’t make his feelings Abed’s problem.

“Are there even any gay rom-coms?” he asks instead.

“Not a huge selection, but I can give you a list. Or we could do a marathon.”

“Cool! Thanks,” Troy says, wondering if he could even survive watching something like that with Abed.

He’s not sure he _can_ keep quiet, actually. He’s never been very good at keeping secrets. And he knows it would be fine, in the sense that Abed wouldn’t stop being friends with him over something like that. He’s not worried about that. He just… doesn’t want Abed to feel sorry for him, or feel bad about not returning Troy’s feelings. But another thing is that he’ll probably hold out a little bit of hope until Abed flat-out rejects him, and it’s just going to keep eating at him. Not to mention that keeping something so important from Abed would feel like lying, which is something Troy never wants to do. And Abed did say he wanted to avoid a miscommunication trope, that they should just say what they mean… Maybe he should…

“Did you know that the diner from Kickpuncher Detroit is within walking distance from here?” Abed abruptly changes the subject before Troy can make up his mind. “We could have lunch there tomorrow.”

“Awesome!” Troy says, with perhaps a little more enthusiasm than he actually feels. “But how can it be walking distance? Is there a portal? Or is that one of those things that look really _far_ on the map but are actually close?”

“Kickpuncher Detroit was filmed almost entirely in LA. Only the establishing shots are actually Detroit.”

“ _What?_ No way!”

“You can see palm trees in several scenes. It may be the reason why it’s so unpopular in Detroit.”

“I feel so betrayed right now! Can you trust _nothing_ in movies these days?!”

They talk about Kickpuncher and the recent remakes until they fall asleep. (It turns out that Kickpuncher Miami was also filmed in LA. Troy is outraged.) It’s fine. In fact, it’s better than fine - it’s perfect because it’s just like it used to be, the two of them talking about random stuff until their eyelids grow too heavy and one of them falls asleep in the middle of a sentence. It’s not worth ruining that with something that’s likely to bring only tension and awkwardness. Troy can tell Abed later. At some point. When the time is right.

Soon.


	3. Chapter 3

When Abed wakes up, Troy is gone. He’s not in Abed’s room, not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in either of the bathrooms, not on the balcony.

Abed didn’t hallucinate him, he’s certain of that (fairly certain). His things are here. His duffel bag in the corner of Abed’s room, clothes spilling out of it. There’s an extra toothbrush (wet) in one of the bathrooms. The air mattress he slept on is on the floor next to Abed’s bed, blankets pushed to the side. The pillow smells like Troy. Even if Abed had developed a split personality disorder _Secret Window_ style, he couldn’t have made the pillow smell like Troy. And there’s a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen even though the coffee maker had been broken for over two weeks because no one in this apartment has adopted the Annie Edison role of making sure things get done. If Abed doesn’t know how to fix coffee makers, surely it would be impossible for his split personality alter ego to know how to do it. Troy must have done it. He was here for real, he slept next to Abed, he used the bathroom, fixed the coffee maker, made coffee... and left.

He didn’t _leave_ leave. Obviously not. Again, his things are here. He wouldn’t have left without his bag. He wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye. That wouldn’t make any sense, Troy wouldn’t do that. He’s coming back. Of course he’s coming back. He probably just went for a walk. (Maybe he needed to get away from Abed for a while.) It’s fine. He doesn’t need to ask for Abed’s permission to go somewhere. There’s really no need to feel… anything about it. There’s no need for Abed to stand forlornly in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the pot of coffee, feeling like the walls are closing in on him just because Troy isn’t there when _Troy was supposed to be there,_ and it’s been less than twenty-four hours, why did he leave already? 

Then he hears the front door open, and the next thing he knows, Troy is striding into the kitchen, a plastic shopping bag in hand.

“Hey, Abed,” he says lightly when he sees him, his face immediately breaking into a wide, happy grin. “I thought I’d make pancakes for breakfast as a surprise, but you didn’t have most of the stuff I need so I went out to get it.” His smile falters. “I guess I ruined the surprise by telling you about it. I thought you’d still be asleep. Oh well. Pancakes?” He sets the shopping bag down on the counter and starts taking things out, but something stops him when he glances at Abed. “Abed? Everything all right?”

Troy steps closer to him, that soft look in his eyes that Abed knows so well. It’s a look that means _Troy actively cares about Abed._ Troy used to wear it so often that Abed learned to recognize it, and now it’s back. It’s back because Troy still cares about Abed, even though Abed was convinced that he wouldn’t. But knowing that somehow makes things worse rather than better. It would be easier if one of the worst scenarios Abed had simulated had turned out to be true. The one where Troy never comes back because he found a place he liked better somewhere out there, with people he liked better. The one where he comes back but doesn’t even care about seeing Abed again. The one where it turns out they no longer have anything to say to each other. The one where they become polite acquaintances. All of that would be easier than this, having Troy come back with all his affection for Abed still there, his understanding and enthusiasm and care, like he’d never left, except he had, and he’s going to leave again, and it would be easier to let him leave again if he hadn’t let Abed have another taste all of that.

“Fine,” Abed says when he finds his voice. Of course he’s fine, he has to be. He can’t not be fine just because Troy went _shopping,_ that’s just absurd. “I need to take a shower,” he mutters, and flees to the bathroom.

He doesn’t turn the light on; instead he sits on the floor in the dark and does some breathing exercises. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. He’s acting crazy. He has to stop acting crazy. He has limited time with Troy and he can’t ruin it by freaking out every time Troy is out of his sight. Any kinds of… extreme reactions have to be reserved for after Troy’s gone. Troy can’t ever know about this, that’s the only way to maximize the number of times Abed gets to see him again.

He’s lucky, really: this is the best case scenario, the one he barely dared hope for. The one where Troy comes back, and he’s grown and changed but he’s still Troy, and he still wants to be Abed’s friend, and they can still be Troy and Abed - but only for a short burst at a time. Because Troy has his own life now, independent of Abed, like he wanted. They’ll see each other again, whenever Troy can make time for him, and the times they spend together will be great. Until one day Troy doesn’t come and just sends a card instead. And after a while, the cards will stop coming too. Abed knows how it goes. 

It’s the best case scenario because it’s the one where gets the most time with Troy, but it’s not the least painful one. That’s okay, though. Abed can take the pain; he’s done it before, he can do it again. He just mustn’t let Troy see.

His therapist is really going to have a field day with this.

He turns on the light and finally takes a shower. When he comes out of the bathroom, the entire apartment smells of melted butter, and Abed finally registers what Troy said to him - he’s making _pancakes_.

Troy smiles at him a little cautiously as he carefully pours batter onto the pan. “You okay, buddy?”

Abed nods, watching the improbably domestic scene of Troy in Abed’s kitchen, making breakfast for the two of them.

“You know how to make pancakes?” he asks. There’s no box mix in sight and as far as he can tell, Troy isn’t referring to a recipe.

“Yeah,” Troy says, laughing a little self-deprecatingly. “It took me about two years to learn not to burn all of them, now I only burn the first few. I got the recipe from Annie to remind me of home. Even though mine never turn out as nice as hers.”

He flips the pancake carefully. “Oh, and I totally tried to toss them in the air to flip them, but that just ended with batter all over the galley. That’s what you call a kitchen on a boat, because everything on a boat has to have random made-up names.”

He gives Abed a casual but somehow entirely heart-stopping smile, and Abed speaks without meaning to.

“How long are you staying?” He doesn’t want to talk about Troy leaving, but he needs to know how long he has.

“Oh, um.” Troy frowns at the pancake. “I don’t know? I’d really like to go see Annie and Shirley soon, so, a few days? But if you need me to get out of the apartment--”

“No, it’s fine,” Abed says quickly. A few days. “And then what? Back to Greendale?”

Troy doesn’t answer immediately. He slides the last pancake onto the stack of them and turns off the stove, then slowly turns to face Abed.

“Then I thought I’d come back here,” Troy says quietly, like he isn’t sure he should be saying it at all. “I mean, not _here_. You don’t need another roommate, obviously. But I could find my own apartment.”

“Here?” Abed repeats. He must have misunderstood

“Yeah. Somewhere nearby.” Troy looks at Abed expectantly, and when Abed doesn’t say anything, he asks, “Is that okay?”

“You don’t need my permission to stay in LA,” says Abed’s voice somewhere outside of his body.

Troy gives him a strange kind of half-smile. He takes a breath, releases it and takes another. “It’s not about the city, Abed. I don’t care if it’s LA or Greendale or fucking Gotham. I want to be where you are.” His eyes focus on Abed, soft and warm and determined. “I guess I’m asking if that’s what you want too.”

Abed is certain that this is one of those times when people say words that have meanings that Abed knows, but for some reason what they are actually saying is something completely different that Abed can’t interpret because he’s missing an important social cue. It makes no sense for Troy to say something like that.

“Why?” he asks instead of answering.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want… that.”

Troy’s eyebrows draw together. “Because you’re my best friend.” He says it like it should be self-evident. “I mean, I get it if I’m not yours anymore. But you’re still mine, and I don’t want to be away from you.”

“But that’s why you left,” Abed can’t help pointing out the obvious. “To get away from me.”

Troy’s eyes widen and he takes a step back. “What? No! Where did you… That’s not true!”

“It’s what you said.”

“No, I didn’t! I’d _never_ say that! Abed--”

“Yes, you did,” Abed says quickly, trying to be as dispassionate as possible. What Troy is saying doesn’t make any sense. He has to make it make sense. “You said the trip was your chance to be one person, implying that being with me was what was stopping you from achieving that. I was hindering your character development.”

Troy jerks as if Abed had slapped him. He opens his mouth, but it takes a moment before any words come out.

“Abed. _No._ That’s not. Is that what you’ve been thinking all this time? I didn’t mean -- I’m sorry I said that, it was a stupid thing to say and not even _true_ , because I -- _fuck!”_ Troy hardly ever swears, which means that this is serious. His face twists and he actually grabs at his hair, which is long enough now for him to do that, in a gesture widely understandable to audiences as indicative of intense emotional turmoil. Then he takes a deep breath and visibly tries to pull himself together. “It was never about leaving _you,_ specifically. I had to do some things on my own, but I was _always_ coming back _to you_. You… you knew that, didn’t you?” Troy asks, an almost pleading look in his eyes. “I mean, you gave me the homing pigeon genes. You had to know I was coming back.”

“That was just make-believe. I didn’t really clone you.”

“I know that!” Troy says desperately, and for a second it looks like he’s going to cry, but he doesn’t. “But that doesn’t matter, because I never needed some stupid bird genes to want to come back. Abed… the only reason I was able to leave at all was because I had _you_ to come back to. Just… that was what actually gave me the strength to go through with it. Not being a clone, but the thought that in the end… I’d get back, and you’d be there.”

Abed doesn’t know how to wrap his mind around any of that. It feels like a huge chunk of his backstory just got retconned. Troy left because Abed was holding him back. That’s always been the established canon. Logically, they should only be able to get back together briefly, to showcase how Troy has matured and doesn’t need Abed anymore. But Troy’s point of view doesn’t fit with that at all - that instead of wanting to leave, what Troy wanted was to _return._ To Abed.

“I didn’t know that,” he whispers.

Troy releases a shaky breath. He steps closer to Abed, lifting a hand as if to touch him, but then he lets it fall limply at this side again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, so earnest it hurts. Or maybe it’s something else that hurts, but something definitely hurts. “I should’ve told you. I should’ve made sure you knew. You - you’re the most important person in my life. I never wanted to make you feel like I didn’t want to be with you anymore. Because I do. Always.”

Abed should probably respond to that somehow, but the way Troy’s looking at him right now has made him forget how to form words, so he just swallows and nods. Then Troy’s expression changes and hardens into something like determination.

“And you never hindered my character development, okay? Never. I did that all on my own because I was too much of a coward to admit to myself that I was in love with you.”

Sound cuts off and the image freezes for a second, as if someone had pressed pause. When it resumes, it’s filled with static.

“I’m in love with you,” Troy repeats after a moment. His voice sounds distant, barely making its way through the static. “I have been since - I don’t even know when. And I’m sorry, I didn’t want to tell you now, or like this… I just. I didn’t realize that was what you thought, I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. You never - I guess I needed to be apart from you for a while to understand how I felt about you, but that was never your fault. It was just me being stupid. I’m sorry.”

If Abed was a character in a movie, his reaction would be to stare in disbelief, or let out a shocked gasp, or throw himself at Troy. But in reality, his reaction is to think about what he would do if he was a character in a movie because he’s unable to do anything else.

“And you don’t have to say anything,” Troy says quietly, as if Abed was actually capable of speaking. His voice is level and steady now, like he’s saying _I know you hate when people do this in movies_. “I don’t have any expectations. If you don’t feel the same, it’s fine and we don’t have to talk about it and I’ll never bring it up again. All I want is to be your friend. Because that’s - that’s always been the best thing in my life. And I never want to lose that. So I’d like. I’d like to live close to you. If that’s okay.”

Abed hears Troy's words and on some level he understands what they mean, but the meaning feels removed from him, as if he was trying to read them through a fogged-up window. He observes his own physical reactions: his shallow breathing, his hammering heart, the tension in his muscles, the way his nails are digging into the palm of his left hand, the sharp squeezing in his chest, but he can’t make out what it means about what he feels. Is he happy? He should be happy. Troy wants to stay. Troy is in love with him. People are happy when their love interest turns out to love them back. Sometimes there are tears, but those are tears of joy (like Troy crying at the airport: because he was happy to see Abed). At the very least, he should react. He wishes Annie was here, or someone, anyone, someone who would tell him what to do.

“Abed?” Troy asks softly. Abed doesn’t know how long he’s been silent, staring into the middle distance, but it must have been long enough for Troy to get worried. He understands, in a sort of distant, disconnected way, that this can’t be pleasant for Troy. Love confessions make people vulnerable. Abed doesn’t want Troy to feel vulnerable. Troy said he didn’t have to say anything, but if he doesn’t, Troy will think Abed doesn’t feel the same. Abed can’t let him think that. He can’t let him think that. But he can’t say anything because his mouth won’t open and he can’t do anything because his muscles won’t move and nothing makes sense and the static is getting really loud and he’s not sure he remembers how to breathe properly and he’s getting it all _wrong--_

“Hey, it’s okay, buddy,” Troy speaks very gently, in a way that’s intensely familiar to Abed. “You don’t have to worry about it. We’ll just - forget I ever said anything, and go on as before.” He places a careful hand on Abed’s upper arm and all of Abed’s attention immediately zeroes in on that point of contact. Troy’s touch is light, ready to withdraw at the slightest notice, but Abed barely has time to wish it was firmer before it _is,_ as if Troy had read his mind. His fingers squeeze just hard enough for the pressure to be grounding, and Abed’s breaths start coming a little easier. And somehow that gives him enough - strength, or courage, or presence of mind, to take a step forward, closer to Troy.

“Oh,” Troy exhales, like he wasn’t expecting that, but he still somehow immediately knows what Abed needs. He wraps his arms around Abed, squeezing tightly. No one else has ever known to do that: to hug Abed so tight it feels like it might crush his bones, enough to make him remember he _has_ bones, he has a body that’s real, and here, and now.

“There you go,” Troy murmurs to him as the static gradually starts to bleed away, and his hold on Abed relaxes. “It’s all fine. We’re just going to have breakfast, okay, and... maybe watch something? I haven’t seen any of the new _Inspector Spacetime_. I’ve been really looking forward to that.”

His voice doesn’t waver at all. It’s calm and steady and comforting like rewatching a favorite episode of a favorite show, and Abed thinks, _Troy Barnes, did you know you possess the greatest gift life can give? The heart of a hero._

Because Abed’s reacting irrationally and Troy would have every reason to be upset or hurt or emotional or frustrated or - something, but instead he’s just _here_. For Abed. Disregarding his own feelings and providing the comfort Abed needs without question, even though he can’t have any idea why Abed needs it, since Abed himself doesn’t know why he needs it. 

Abed loves him so much.

He nods to answer Troy’s question, and then he realizes that if he can move his head to nod he can also move his arms to hug back, so he does that before Troy can start to pull away. Troy freezes for a second but quickly relaxes, and they melt into something more reciprocal.

It’s their third embrace in twenty-four hours that takes far longer than any hugging scene should, but Abed doesn’t care because it feels good, Troy feels good in his arms, and Abed loves him.

He thinks about that feeling for a moment, the way it exists in his body, the way it always has, like some sort of vulnerable but essential organ. Abed had tried to protect it with bionic armor, but now he thinks maybe it isn’t necessary anymore.

He listens to the way his breathing has synced up with Troy’s, and then he opens his mouth and the words just come out on their own: “I’m in love with you too.”

Troy inhales sharply and then exhales in a rush of breath, his chest rising and falling against Abed’s.

“Y-you are?” he asks, and only now does his voice break. “I thought… _Abed_.” 

Abed’s pretty sure that no one has ever said his name like that before, like it means everything. Troy pulls back a little to look at him. Abed has never been good at reading facial expressions and he has no idea what the one on Troy’s face right now means, but he knows that he’s never seen it before. It’s happy and sad and awed at the same time, or maybe it’s none of those things, but it speaks to something inside Abed in a way that makes his heart rate pick up again, and this time it feels less like panic and more like… something else. Something good.

He realizes suddenly that this is clearly meant to be the scene where they kiss. Mutual declaration of love - there’s really nothing else that can follow, unless they get interrupted or there is an imminent threat to their lives. Neither of those things are happening, so they should kiss. Now.

Abed doesn’t think he can do that.

He could, if he played a role. He can do a lot of otherwise impossible things when he plays a role. But he doesn’t want to be playing a role when he kisses Troy, he wants to be Abed. And Abed can’t do that. He feels like a part of him is still on a different plane of existence, not fully in the moment. When he kisses Troy (it’s going to happen, he’s going to kiss Troy), he needs to be present and remember every detail.

He forces his mouth to move. “I can’t do a kiss scene right now.”

“Okay,” Troy says immediately, automatically, still looking at Abed with that happy-sad-awed expression. “How about a scene where we eat pancakes, then?” 

The pancakes turn out to be just as good as Annie’s, if not better. They eat mostly in silence, and afterwards Abed goes back to his bedroom to retrieve his laptop and they watch _Inspector Spacetime_ , because Troy hasn’t seen any of the new episodes and Abed needs to do something familiar so that he can start feeling normal again.

He’s not really watching, though, which is something that almost never happens - his life is rarely more worthy of his attention than TV, but right now, he just lets the familiar sounds and images soothe him until he feels ready to actually think about everything he’s just learned. About Troy on his boat, grappling with his sexuality. Troy wanting to stay here with him. Troy loving him - now and in the past, in the study room, in their apartment, in the Dreamatorium.

Flashback montage: Troy putting a hand on his shoulder and telling him it is a happy Valentine’s day now that they are alone. Troy kissing him in his Kickpuncher costume for far longer than necessary for the scene they were filming. The two of them walking around campus holding hands. Snuggling together on the lower bunk in Abed’s dorm room while watching movies even though there is a perfectly good couch a few steps away, and neither of them moving to the top bunk to sleep. Annie sighing and rolling her eyes when Troy calls her from another date with Britta to ask about Abed. Troy deciding that watching TV with Abed is what makes him happiest. Troy looking at him, at various moments, in a way that would probably be rendered as having hearts in his eyes if they were in a cartoon. Troy kissing him desperately the night before he left.

It’s like rewatching a movie: it’s different when you already know how it ends, and the final plot twist suddenly seems obvious. Troy loves him. Troy has loved him for - possibly as long as Abed has loved him. It’s always been there, Abed was just too afraid to hope to see it. It’s not a plot twist at all.

Troy loves him.

Troy loves him.

Troy loves him.

Maybe if Abed can believe that, he can also believe that Troy wants to stay.

“We can kiss now,” he decides, and when he turns to Troy he finds him already looking back at him, ignoring the TV. Abed’s eyes are immediately drawn to Troy’s pink lower lip, but Troy stops his kiss lean by placing a gentle hand on Abed’s chest.

“Wait,” Troy murmurs and Abed forces his gaze away from Troy’s lips to meet his eyes. Troy gives him a lopsided sort of smile. “I _really_ want to kiss you. Like, _so much._ But… you went all ‘everyone on Cougarton Abbey just died’ on me for a minute there. I have no idea what’s going on inside your head.”

Oh. Of course. This entire scene had to be pretty confusing from Troy’s point of view, Abed realizes as he replays it in his mind. But he’s Troy, so he’s simply given Abed the time he needed, without pushing, and Abed loves him even more for that.

“Sorry,” he says. “I just needed some time to process. I didn’t expect this development.” He reaches out to touch Troy’s face without consciously deciding to do so, running his fingertips from the smooth skin of Troy’s cheek to the scratchy stubble on his jaw. He’s captivated by the way Troy breathes out through his nose and his eyelashes flutter as he leans into Abed’s touch, lightly, like he barely dares believe it’s really happening.

“Me neither,” Troy admits. “Not really. I _hoped,_ all the time I was on that boat, but by the end I was sure you’d have moved on.”

Abed nods. “Mutual pining. Not a trope I expected to find myself in, but overall better than one-sided pining, I think. At least in real life.”

Troy smiles. “Totally. But… Abed. I’m _so sorry_ for--”

“No.”

“No?”

“Don’t apologize,” Abed says firmly. “For one, you already have, and more importantly, you didn’t actually do anything that merits an apology.”

“I did, though. I left and didn’t make sure you knew I’d come back.” He touches Abed’s hand, squeezing gently. “I’ll always come back to you, Abed. Always. Nothing could stop me. Do you believe that?”

Abed considers his answer for a moment. “I’m trying to,” he says eventually, because friends don’t lie.

“Okay,” Troy nods. “That’s good. I’ll convince you.”

His eyes are sincere and beautiful and a little closer than they were a moment ago.

“You know what would help convincing me?” Abed asks, and for some reason it comes out as a whisper.

“What?” Troy breathes. Abed can feel it on his lips.

“Kiss me,” he says, and Troy does.

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is all fluff and no substance, sorry about that.

Abed is beautiful.

Troy knew that, obviously. But he’s never before had a chance to look at him uninterrupted for so long, and from so close. They’re lying on top of the covers on Abed’s bed, facing each other with just a few inches between them, and Troy can’t stop looking, can’t stop touching. The shape of his eyebrows, the small scar on the bridge of his nose, the way his lashes frame his eyes, the faint lines on his forehead. The curve of his mouth, the way it parts when Troy brushes his thumb over his lower lip. He can’t keep looking at Abed’s mouth for too long before he needs to kiss it again, soft and sweet and thorough.

They have been kissing for probably hours, with breaks only to hug, cuddle, talk in hushed tones and move from the living room to the bedroom when both Abed’s roommates showed up. Troy feels like he could do this forever, getting lost in Abed, the endless ebb and flow between them, the gentle kisses that grow in urgency and need before settling back down into something soft and languid, over and over again.

“This feels like a dream,” Abed murmurs, his lips so close to Troy’s Troy can almost feel them move.

“I had some dreams like this,” Troy admits, dragging his fingers through Abed’s silky soft hair. “But they were never this good. My subconscious didn’t do you justice.”

He feels Abed’s lips curl into a small smile where they’re pressed against the corner of Troy’s mouth. Troy turns his head a little to capture them again, licking into Abed’s mouth. It’s so much better than any dream he’s ever had.

“That night before I left,” Troy says when they break apart again, “that wasn’t a dream, though, was it?” He had spent so many long nights thinking about that kiss, what it meant, whether it was even real.

“Not unless we had the same dream.”

Troy is immediately distracted by the possibility of the two of them sharing dreams. “Man, that would be so cool if we had the same dreams! Can you imagine? Hang on, um… did you ever dream that we were Han and Leia in _Empire_ , except like, with zombies? I get that dream a lot.”

Abed opens his mouth to answer, but then a small crease appears between his eyebrows and he hesitates. “It does feel strangely familiar. Wasn’t that something we simulated in the Dreamatorium?”

“ _Star Wars_ with zombies? I don’t think we ever did that. I don’t think we ever did anything with zombies.”

“You’re right, I’d remember if we did,” Abed says, his expression thoughtful. “In your dream, who’s who?”

“You’re Han, obviously,” Troy says, unable to suppress a smile at the memory of their second paintball fight. He really should have figured some things out then.

“And it’s the ‘I love you/I know’ scene,” Abed says, his eyes unfocused, like he’s remembering something too.

Troy sits up in excitement. “Yes! Oh my god, Abed! We totally had the same dream!”

“It’s strange, though. I don’t usually remember my dreams. I didn’t remember this one until you told me about it.”

“Well, maybe you’ll remember others! Like… you’re pouring a bowl of Cheerios, only they start getting bigger and bigger until they’re bigger than you and then _they_ eat _you?”_

“No.”

“Oh. Okay, how about… we’re taking a Spanish exam, but then suddenly it’s not a classroom but a church and Chang is getting married to the Dean?”

“Definitely not, and I didn’t need that visual.”

“Damn! Maybe it only works with movie-based dreams.” He racks his brain for a movie-inspired dream he had. “Oh, I know! How about one where we’re Timon and Pumbaa?”

Abed shakes his head. “Sorry. I think the Han and Leia one was a fluke. Still pretty cool, though.”

“Yeah,” Troy says, a bit deflated, and lies back down on his back. “Imagine if it worked, though. We could learn to communicate in our sleep!”

Abed lies down next him. “That would be convenient if we ever get separated again.”

Troy reaches for his hand and squeezes it. “Good thing we’re never getting separated again, then,” he says rather forcefully. As far as he’s concerned, they’ve had enough time apart for the rest of forever. “We won’t need it.”

“You don’t know that,” Abed points out. “As a matter of fact, it’s extremely unlikely we’d spent every single day of the rest of our lives together.”

“Yes, but never for this long again.” Troy is certain of that – he simply won’t allow it. “Only when one of us is visiting family or something like that. Or when you’re a famous director and you’re filming your next blockbuster in Madagascar or somewhere. And if that takes too long, I’ll just use my millionaire money to go see you.”

Abed doesn’t reply immediately and when Troy his head turns to face him, he finds Abed looking back at him with an expression that most people would probably see as neutral but which Troy knows is anything but.

“What sort of movie would I be making in Madagascar?” he asks softly.

Live-action _Madagascar, duh,_ Troy wants to say, because that would be _awesome_ and if Abed was making that Troy wouldn’t just visit, he would live on set so he could watch trained lemurs move it every day, but it doesn’t seem like an Abed thing, so he tries to come up with something else.

“I don’t know, a cool Abed film that needs rainforests and a pirate cemetery and these incredible huge trees that don’t even look real,” he says. “Could work for some kind of fantasy realm. Or an alien planet. _Or_ a fantasy realm on an alien planet ruled by lemurs,” he adds, because it would really be a wasted opportunity to miss out on the trained lemurs. 

Abed looks at him thoughtfully and when he opens his mouth Troy expects him to start developing the movie, but instead he says, “I love you.”

It’s the second time Abed has said it (not that Troy’s counting) but Troy’s breath still catches in his throat. He’s pretty sure he’ll never get tired of hearing that.

“I know,” he says with a smirk because they were just talking about that scene, but then he adds, “I love you too,” because he’ll also never get tired of saying it. He kind of wishes he could keep saying it all the time.

Abed kisses him, and Troy keeps saying it into the kiss and he knows Abed is saying it back, because they don’t actually need shared dreams to be able to communicate without speaking, they never did, and they just discovered a whole new way to do it. Troy can’t wait to become fluent in this new language they’re developing, kisses and caresses and gasps and sighs. It’s new but it’s also not, like something he used to know but forgot and is now remembering instead of learning from scratch. Abed pushes him into the pillows as he licks against the seam of Troy’s lips and Troy opens his mouth for him eagerly, letting him deepen the kiss. It feels fantastic, having Abed half on top of him, one of his hands buried in Abed’s hair and the other on the warm stretch of skin between his waistband and where his t-shirt has ridden up – or maybe Troy has pushed it up, it’s unclear, but he’s definitely touching warm smooth skin, Abed shuddering under his touch, and that’s sort of the only thing that matters to him right now. That and the slick slide of Abed’s tongue against his, the instinctive push-and-pull, sharing Abed’s air, the way Abed’s fingers feel splayed over Troy’s ribcage, the hammering of his heart.

“We should probably stop,” Abed breathes but doesn’t actually show any signs of stopping as he goes right back to kissing Troy with undivided focus.

“Mm-hmm,” Troy agrees, or at least that’s what he means to do, it’s possible it comes out more as a needy whimper. But Abed is right, they should stop. He doesn’t want to get carried away. They should take it slow – even if it feels like this is all a million years overdue. They only confessed their feelings this morning (is it still morning? Probably not. Who cares?), and Abed didn’t even feel ready for a kissing scene at first. Troy doesn’t want to rush – and not just for Abed’s sake, either, since Abed definitely seems like he knows what he wants now. Troy wants to take his time, do this right. He lets the intensity gradually taper off, bringing their foreheads together when their lips finally separate.

“You promised to take me to the Kickpuncher diner,” he murmurs.

“I did, didn’t I,” Abed sighs, nuzzling against Troy’s cheek, and it takes truly superhuman effort to extricate themselves from each other’s embrace. There should be awards for this kind of self-restraint, Troy thinks. 

They eventually manage to make themselves presentable enough to leave the apartment. (It’s hot enough for a t-shirt and shorts. Troy does his best to keep his brain from short-circuiting at the sight of that much exposed skin but he’s not entirely successful.) When they leave Abed’s building and start walking down the street, Troy takes Abed’s hand without thinking about it. It takes him several minutes to realize what he’s doing: he’s holding another man’s hand, in public, in broad daylight. And this isn’t Greendale campus where nobody batted an eye at basically anything, and they aren’t holding hands like two kids on a playground. They’re holding hands like a couple, their fingers interlaced, and this is a normal street of a normal city full of normal people. Troy is suddenly hyper-aware of everyone they pass – are they looking at them? Did they notice they’re holding hands? Did their expression turn disapproving when they noticed? Does this man with a twin stroller think they’re being inappropriate in front of his children? Is this old lady scandalized or is she scowling for unrelated reasons? Does this straight white couple have any idea what it actually means to hold hands?

Abed squeezes his hand briefly, then relaxes his hold. “You can let go if you want, it’s okay.”

“No,” Troy says firmly. He wants to hold Abed’s hand, so he’s going to keep holding Abed’s hand. He just is. Most people don’t even notice them anyway. They have their own lives. They don’t care. And it’s Abed’s hand Troy’s holding, which means that he can do this. As well as much scarier things, like coming out to his parents. He has Abed. He can do anything.

He tightens his grip on Abed’s hand, smiling at him, and they walk the rest of the way swinging their arms between their bodies and passing secret messages through hand squeezes. All of Troy’s messages are a variation of _I love you_ and _I’m so happy_ , which really feels like it’s the same thing, like being in love with Abed is what being happy means and people who aren’t in love with Abed can’t possibly know real happiness. Or maybe that’s not entirely right – happiness is being in love with Abed and not having to hide it. He doesn’t have to do that anymore, because _Abed loves him back._ He can keep looking at Abed and grin like a loon while he does it and doesn’t have to stop himself from doing that. He feels like he might break into a song and dance routine at any time. And actually, why shouldn’t he? This is LA, someone could see him and cast him in a musical.

He’s pretty sure that all of the little dudes in his head that are in charge of his emotions are drunk. Or actually, Joy is drunk and the rest of them are probably on vacation somewhere, because he definitely isn’t feeling anything else. Except for love for Abed, which is what Joy is drunk on.

The best thing about it is knowing Abed feels as giddy as he does. All those people who’ve ever called Abed an emotionless robot couldn’t be more wrong – you just have to pay attention, and Troy is always paying attention. He sees the way Abed looks at him now, like he never wants to stop looking, like Troy is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and it makes Troy feel warm all over.

The diner looks very different now than it did in Kickpuncher Detroit and only serves vegan food, but it’s actually pretty good. Although, at this stage, Troy’s not sure he would notice if he _didn’t_ like the food – everything would probably taste good when he’s eating it sitting across from Abed, smiling at each other, their legs touching under the table. They try to reenact the scene from the movie and are met with misunderstanding from their waitress and the people in the booth next to theirs since clearly none of them have bothered to learn their roles, but not even that can make a dent in Troy’s good mood. They take several selfies and send one of them to the group chat, captioning it _‘Troy and Abed reunited!’,_ which prompts excited responses from Annie, Shirley and Britta. Jeff doesn’t reply, but Abed tells him that just means he’s too emotional to come up with something sarcastic.

After lunch they wander around Abed’s neighborhood and Troy keeps an eye out for ‘For Rent’ signs.

“You really want to live around here?” Abed asks as they walk through a rather sad little park. “You could do much better with Pierce’s money.”

“I told you, I want to be wherever you are. Besides, it’s only temporary. Just until we’re ready to move in together. Then we can live wherever you want.” If Troy’s being honest, he really wants to move in together immediately and also probably ask Abed to marry him and have his babies. But he did sail around the world to get all mature and stuff, so he should probably make sensible decisions now. Like not getting emotional whiplash by moving too fast.

He glances up at Abed, who’s giving him a strange, intense kind of look.

“What?” He feels a brief twinge of panic that maybe Abed doesn’t want that, but it’s gone before it’s even fully there. He knows it’s not that. They’re on the same page now.

Abed shakes his head. “Nothing, just – it feels overwhelming that we can do this now. Plan a future together.”

Troy grins at him. He likes the sound of that – _a future together._

“It’s like the giantest cookie ever, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Probably shouldn’t eat it all at once, you’re right. Even though I really want to.”

The way Abed says it makes Troy’s cheeks heat. “Me too. But, you know.”

Abed nods. “Delayed gratification to keep viewers invested in the relationship even when the romantic tension has been resolved.”

“Something like that,” Troy says, and tries very hard not to think about the possible meanings of _gratification._ Instead, he thinks about a house that’s theirs, with a Dreamatorium and a TV room that looks like a mini movie theater and a special shelf where they’ll keep Abed’s Oscars and a bedroom with big windows and king size bed and movie posters everywhere. And Troy will find a dance class and fix air-conditioners and ask Shirley to teach him to cook more than three things so he can make dinner when Abed comes home after a long day of being brilliant in Hollywood and on weekends they’ll have lazy mornings with breakfast in bed and sometimes they’ll invite the rest of the study group to visit and maybe they’ll get a dog and that will be their _life…_

“Abed.” He tugs at Abed’s hand to make him stop walking, overwhelmed with the images filling his head. “I’d really like to kiss you now.”

Abed tilts his head. “But we’re in public.”

“I know. I don’t care,” Troy says, and yes, there is a kind of nervous twisting going on in his stomach, but the thing is, the kiss he wants should take place outdoors. This park doesn’t exactly have the romantic atmosphere of a beach at sunset or a dramatic clifftop, but it will do. “Do you?”

Abed shakes his head, and in the next instant one or both of them have moved, bringing their mouths together. And of course Abed knows what kind of kiss Troy wants, of course he knows how to make it happen. He cups the back of Troy’s head as he claims his mouth, pulling him flush to his chest. It’s a look-what-we’ve-got, I’m-so-in-love-I-want-everyone-to-know kiss. It’s an end-of-the-movie kiss, even though this movie has no end: the kind of kiss where their surroundings blur into insignificance (Troy knows this even though his eyes are closed), there’s swelling music that drowns out all ambient sound and the camera circles around them and slowly rises up. It’s not the end of the movie but it’s the end of something, and the beginning of something else, something new. 

*

At the beginning, Troy and Abed kiss.


End file.
